Guide to being an English Major

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As Weird as it Gets

1)   Write about how to be an English major in a coffee shop where employees are corporately forced to sport matching aprons and visors despite the shitty coffee, just like I am doing right now.

2)   Learn to love shitty coffee.

3)   Become a vegetarian. Or at least pretend to be one when every single one of your creative writing classmates announces, nearly breaking out into song in perfect harmony, that every single one of them have sworn off meat consumption for life and that nothing in the entire universe could be more demoralizing than a bacon cheeseburger, except for maybe attempting to “find x” in an algebra equation.

4)   Good luck if you do decide to take up the leaf life of vegetarianism, for you are too late. Your progressive classmates have already moved on to the state of veganhood, and how could you not know at least fifteen differences between vegetaranism and veganism?? You are mindless.

5)   Read Harry Potter and love it. Love it even if you hate it- trust me. (Never admit to reading Twilight and/or having an affinity for James Patterson- this is English major social suicide.) Also, no need to be concerned with people that have permanently inked themselves with tattoos of Harry Potter himself, which is normal here.

6)   Embrace the gays, the bis, the sexually unsures and remember that they’re your most reliable allys when you’ve skipped 18^th century women’s restoration writers due to a severe case of hungover.

7)   Come to enjoy watching the sun rise-you’re going to be awake writing your paper that’s due tomorrow until then, anyway.

8)   Know that nothing you read means what you think it means, and even once you figure it out, know that you’re wrong. Wrong and stupid, essentially. But maybe you’re right, and an intellectual gift to the literary sphere, and maybe you should try to get it published?

9)    Start to listen to semi-decent indie artists and learn their place/date of birth, shoe size, and favorite salad dressing.

10)  Do not admit to having a pop-station present on your car radio. Do not admit to having a car radio. Do not admit to having a car.

11)   Familiarize yourself with some weird shit. When the know it all of the class brings up her thousandth fun-fact on Sylvia Plath and how she tried to kill herself by sticking her own head in the oven, tell her that Edward Albee wants to fuck a goat- see where that gets you. If she doesn’t appreciate your counteroffer, suggest that she follow in Ms. Plath’s footsteps if she is so fond of her.

12)  Sparknotes.com

13)   Learn to hide your alarm when the bisexual, pajama-wearing, self-proclaimed sexually experimental girl in your poetry class sports a silver, metallic mask to class for no other reason other than because it’s Wednesday. It’s 43 degrees out, the dining hall is open until 10 tonight, and she’s in full costume..again.

14)  If you’re a generally happy person, hide that during class. Your peers will not understand the alien emotion and you will be exiled.

15)  Pretend to have a coughing fit when you can’t stop laughing when someone comes into class in a cape, works every time.

16)  Buy all of your outfits in black and pretend to like cigarettes.

17)  Be aware of the fact that at any point in time at least 75%-1110% of your class is as high as a fucking kite. (See #14)

18)    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” False. Our biggest fear is that we’re going to get caught using wikipiedia.

19)     When a classmate attempts to correlate her love for four legged seating instruments commonly known as chairs, to the plot of Evelina, just take a deep breath (fake the coughing fit if necessary) and remember the first time you read The Great Gatsby in high school and be thankful that your best friends are normal communication majors.

20) Good luck.